High Five Working Group

The Crown of the Continent High Five Working Group was formed in 2016 with a mission to protect and restore functional whitebark and limber pine ecosystems by fostering transboundary collaboration and coordination to transfer sound scientific knowledge, leverage funding opportunities, and optimize restoration and conservation efforts within the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem.

Membership to the High Five Working Group (Hi5WG) is open to all interested individuals. The Hi5WG strives to maintain membership from the following general categories of land jurisdictions within the Crown: tribes and First Nations, federal, state, and provincial agencies, and private, non-profit and industrial interests. Read our charter and see our current membership list.

While the Crown is considered one of North America’s most intact landscapes – there are no known extinctions – whitebark pine and limber pine are both highly imperiled in this landscape, due to a combination of an exotic pathogen, epidemic outbreaks of native beetles, a history of fire suppression and climate change. Without these pines and the communities that they anchor, carrying capacity for wildlife declines, high and low elevation forests are more geographically restricted and homogeneous, and multiple ecosystem services are diminished.

Restoration protocols, tools, and technologies are available and being implemented for whitebark pine and, to a limited extent, for limber pine by individual agencies and organizations, each conducting this work independently. However, consensus exists that the pace and scale of restoration of five-needle pine must be dramatically increased and sustained if these species are to persist within the Crown. Cooperation and a partnership among all interested jurisdictions is essential to enable this level of restoration to be achieved. For this reason, the High Five Working Group was formed to prioritize and advance collective efforts to effectively monitor, conserve, and restore five-needle pines in the Crown of the Continent.

The High Five Working Group is holding their 2019 annual meeting in Pablo, MT. To learn more about the event, check out the agenda.